INTRODUCTION. IN the year 1753 Jean Astruc, a celebrated physician, published a work called 'Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux qui ont servi à Moïse pour écrire la Genèse.' Leclerc (‘Diss. III. de Scriptore Pentateuchi') and R. Simon ('Hist. critique du Vieux Testament,' livr. i. ch. 7) had previously pointed out the existence of two distinct documents in Genesis. M. Lenormant observes that while every verse of the Pentateuch has been discussed minutely and word by word with the view of determining its origin, the details of this necessary labour have become so complicated that only a professional critic can obtain a general view of its results. This induced him to undertake the present work, in order that the conclusions of the specialists might become more generally known, and, if his lamented death had not interrupted the project, he intended to analyse the other books of the Pentateuch in the same manner. He says: 'Many attempts have been made to invalidate the conclusions of criticism, but, to select a few instances, no one has ever been able to explain how it is that man and animals are created by Yahveh in chap. ii. after having been created by Elohim in chap. i. ; how it is that the name of Yahveh is said in Gen. iv. 26 to have been known to men ever since a period before the Deluge, when in Ex. vi. 3 it is said to have been unknown to the patriarchs; how it is that in Gen. vi. 5 it is Yahveh, and in verse 12 it is Elohim who sees that the world is corrupt; and, lastly, how it is that while in Gen. vi. 13 Elohim orders Noah to make the ark, it is Yahveh in chap. vii. 1 who commands him |